A-EftP - Finished. General thoughts. Spoilery.

[madrigan]

After playing several hours with the usual four character party, I realized I was getting bored. The changes in skill and ability development as compared to previous Avernums made the game much less interesting to me. I created a single cheat character and played through the entire game.

 

I think the story and dialogue are really great. The game is humongous and the major quests are very detailed, requiring several sub-quests in order to complete them. The game is also very funny, my personal favorites being the discussion of the proper term for a group of worms, various warning signs (e.g. "Level 4 Ogre Warning"), the really tough gremlin subspecies called the GREMLIN, and the disgruntled workers in Grah-Hoth's fortress.

 

However, as I said,I don't like the new trait/skill/ability system at all. I like it better than the Avadon system, but Avadon is a different game and was not preceded in time by several related games with a system I liked better. When I read Jeff's explanation of the new system, I thought it made sense. But when I actually had to use it, I felt it didn't make sense at all.

 

When I create a character for an RPG, I want the character to start as the character I have in mind. In Avernum 6, just for example, the traits had to do with inherent abilities of the character or with what they had done before the beginning of the game. This character has a special talent for magic; this one was an elite trooper; this one is unusually tough. Special techniques, like mighty blow, are gained as specific skills increase, and the skills increase as levels are gained.

 

In the new game, traits are gained as levels are gained. This makes no sense for many of the traits. It does not make sense that a character suddenly gained the ability to learn more quickly, or suddenly became mechanically inclined, when they happened to reach a new level. Some of the "traits" -- like mighty blows -- are not really traits but techniques or skills. I personally find that the characters start out too similar and that their progression is less believable than in the previous few Avernum games.

 

The skill trees are less restrictive than those in Avadon, but many of the skills have upper limits, which seems arbitrary, and means that a singleton can't accomplish certain tasks or receive certain rewards because they can't get a particular skill past 11 or whatever.

 

I usually play Avernum games straight the first time, with a normal party and no cheating, and then play again with a jacked-up party just to see all the fights and areas and have fun slaughtering all the villains. As I said earlier, I quickly lost interest with my normal party because the skill/trait system made character design so dull. Even the automatic ability stat increases, which I understand the reasons for, prevent me from having a really physically or mentally weak character. Too much has been taken out of my control.

 

In short, A:EFTP is a great story -- well-written, dramatic, funny, and moving. But I'm not sure it's a great game. As an RPG, for me, it failed considerably because I could not create coherent characters from the start.

[Nelzoma]

Originally Posted By: madrigan

However, as I said,I don't like the new trait/skill/ability system at all. I like it better than the Avadon system, but Avadon is a different game and was not preceded in time by several related games with a system I liked better.

I agree on this. The new skill system is improved over Avadon but it is still much less fun than the original Avernum system but it's more appealing to the casual gamer.

The main thing I noticed was that the beginning was ridiculously hard and then about a quarter of the way through it just plateaued.

The last thing to say that Jeff needs to understand is that making the light go out in the game so that you can only take two steps at a time was the worst idea ever. It did not add to the difficulty, it was just a pain in the ass. Please take this into consideration with your next game. I know that I won't be able to convince you to change the skill system back but at least remove this.

[Matchstk]

Let me see if I have this right. You dislike the skill system because your character had the option to learn Tool Use, and it doesn't make sense to you that a fighter could learn to be handy. Of course, you don't have to take a point in that. If you want your fighter to learn riposte, parry, increase their health, it's all up to you. Not sure what the complaint is.

 

And if you had bothered to play the game straight, you would have discovered that as you level up, class-specific skills do emerge in the Traits. Mages and Priests can focus on increasing spell energy or summoning strength, increased magical damage or armor bearing abilities. Fighters can focus on riposte, backstab, increased Endurance. Archers can become wicked snipers. It's all up to you.

 

I think the new skill system is great and the new Avernum is fantastic.

 

[Erika Maroonmark]

Also, what were the light sources for? I was collecting them for a while, but they didn't seem to do anything in dark places.

 

I'm not finished yet, but I do have some general thoughts: I was always a bit confused by the exact details of the storyline in Exile, because for many years I just played the demo version and tried to discover every little secret, detail, and bit of dialogue in the eastern half of the world that I could. So when I've played the full version, I've often thought "am I supposed to know plot detail X yet?" and had some items before I was really supposed to, and the game didn't do anything to prevent it from happening (e.g. the graymold salve recipe – it's just there, and you don't have to go around tracking down Cortath). This sort of thing was alleviated in Avernum 1, but I never played the whole game.

 

So I was pretty excited to finally experience the whole story as it was intended…but really, the fact is that you get "quests" from so many different places at once that it really is kind of confusing. You get a lot of things and information by exploring things just because they're there…the brooches are mostly rewards for quests that you get and know about early on (the spider mission, &c.) even in Exile. However, a lot of this might just be because I knew the storyline from Exile already (so I knew who and where the "good question" brooch guy was, for instance). The graymold sequence was new to me, but I did it without officially knowing why I wanted anything from Patrick. It's an adventure game, you just help people because they're there! So I got a few quests where I could immediately say "I'm one step ahead of you, pal, I already have that item." Not a complaint; it was just interesting. I sort of wish I could have unlearned some of the Exile storyline, though, so that knowing where to go could have been more of a mystery. Oh well.

 

Edited to add: Oh yeah, and I was also kind of disappointed by the Orb of Thralni in this game…in Exile it was really useful for exploring; here not so much.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Erika Maroonmark

Also, what were the light sources for? I was collecting them for a while, but they didn't seem to do anything in dark places.

If you use them in moderately dark areas (like most caverns), they'll make it a bit brighter and easier to see stuff. They don't do anything in magical darkness.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

The skill trees are less restrictive than those in Avadon, but many of the skills have upper limits, which seems arbitrary, and means that a singleton can't accomplish certain tasks or receive certain rewards because they can't get a particular skill past 11 or whatever.

On the one hand, the skill cap is kind of dumb in light of all this. On the other, it obscures the real issue here: for all that Jeff talks about making the game playable and fun for every (not deliberately handicapped) party type, the 'lore' skills have been balanced for a 4-character party since A4 at least. Even if all the cave lore/tool use/arcane lore checks were capped at 10, investing 10 points in those skills is still crippling for a singleton character. A level 50 character gets 71 skill points: if you can beat the game on torment, or even hard, with a singleton who's invested 10 points each in cave lore, arcane lore, and tool use, as far as I'm concerned you can cheat for the other 2-3, because you are a grand master of this game. If anything, this is better in AEftP: at least this way the skill point costs don't scale up. The most cave lore you need in A6 is 18, which means 92 skill points if put all on one character (compared to a total of a bit over 300 from levels, and 50-100 from knowledge brew/wisdom crystals). 92/400 is more than 10/71. The lore skills have been a problem for singletons for a long time; whether this is fixable without radically altering the skill system, I don't know, but it's evident that the AEftP design is not at fault here.

Quote:

When I create a character for an RPG, I want the character to start as the character I have in mind. In Avernum 6, just for example, the traits had to do with inherent abilities of the character or with what they had done before the beginning of the game. This character has a special talent for magic; this one was an elite trooper; this one is unusually tough.

Is the problem with the name "traits"? I agree that the nomenclature is silly and a holdover from older games. That said, they serve a sensible function in the game, and they're much, much, much less broken and unbalanced than the old trait system. Would it help if they were called "perks" or "specializations"? They're basically a (somewhat less wide-ranging and game-breaking) version of the perks from the Fallout series.

[Nicothodes]

Originally Posted By: Erika Maroonmark

I'm not finished yet, but I do have some general thoughts: I was always a bit confused by the exact details of the storyline in Exile, because for many years I just played the demo version and tried to discover every little secret, detail, and bit of dialogue in the eastern half of the world that I could. So when I've played the full version, I've often thought "am I supposed to know plot detail X yet?" and had some items before I was really supposed to, and the game didn't do anything to prevent it from happening (e.g. the graymold salve recipe – it's just there, and you don't have to go around tracking down Cortath). This sort of thing was alleviated in Avernum 1, but I never played the whole game.

I just finished replaying the original A1 and this sort of thing definitely happened to me there. Really memorable ones were the graymold salve and the priestess in Mertis who wanted multiple side quests' worth of potion ingredients.

[Erika Maroonmark]

Also, the graymold itself: someone gave me a clue to its location in the dialogue, so I looked for it there, but I couldn't actually get it until I'd talked to the right person. Whereas in Exile, I'm pretty sure I just stumbled upon it and took some without having to go through the whole sequence (I'm assuming, since I have basically no memory of two of the characters involved). It was weird, but somehow satisfying.

 

Another somewhat strange thing:

Click to reveal..

I confessed to stealing the circlet from Meena and fought her. When she died, I found the password to steal the circlet on her body. I guess there's a way to get forced into killing her sooner, or something, but it was amusing to see "'Ankh'? Maybe it's a password!" when it was a password I'd already used. =D

[Fael]

Originally Posted By: Nelzoma

The last thing to say that Jeff needs to understand is that making the light go out in the game so that you can only take two steps at a time was the worst idea ever. It did not add to the difficulty, it was just a pain in the ass. Please take this into consideration with your next game. I know that I won't be able to convince you to change the skill system back but at least remove this.

Absolutely true, but I think he does -- after all, you don't see this in any of his new games. But this is a remake, after all, and I think this is one of those cases where he's stuck with bad design decisions from the original to preserve the flavor. I hate them, but he was probably right not to remove them. Although if he ever puts one in a new game, I'll have something to replace the hidden switch rant in my signature.

I agree about the skill system, though, except that I liked it here even less than in Avadon. While the center tier skills in Avadon were generally superior to the sides, they weren't impossibly so and there was some flexibility and customization in character design. And, actually, the skill caps on the lower tier skills helped that, too. In A:EftP, you basically have to put 1/2 your skill points into the primary skill for your class (melee, pole, priest spells, or mage spells) and, even with the other half, many of the skills are useless and there's generally a single set of options that is clearly optimal over anything else -- far more so than the center tier in Avadon. The end result is that there's actually very little to do to customize your characters. Bo-oo-oring.

[Triumph]

I don't think any of this involves bad decisions - it's all about making multiple paths to a goal. You can find the graymold salve recipe just by chance, but IF you don't, and yet you need to find it, there's a means in the game of giving directions. If you need a certain circlet for some reason, you can talk to the right people and be sneaky about confiscating it, or you can choose to just take on the whole of Spire to get to it. If you go that route, you'll to find the password at some point. I suppose with something like the Ankh note, it'd be nice if there were a flag that removed or changed it if you'd stolen the circlet already, but I won't fault Jeff for not thinking of everything. I appreciate the many options the game provides.

[Kreador]

Originally Posted By: Erika Maroonmark

Also, the graymold itself: someone gave me a clue to its location in the dialogue, so I looked for it there, but I couldn't actually get it until I'd talked to the right person.

Are you certain that you simply didn't yet have enough cave lore to recognize it the first time you went to the patch? I had found and picked from the graymold patch long before I ever talked to anyone looking for it.

[Erika Maroonmark]

Originally Posted By: Kreador

I had found and picked from the graymold patch long before I ever talked to anyone looking for it.

Well, in that case…=D

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Matchstk

Let me see if I have this right. You dislike the skill system because your character had the option to learn Tool Use, and it doesn't make sense to you that a fighter could learn to be handy. Of course, you don't have to take a point in that. If you want your fighter to learn riposte, parry, increase their health, it's all up to you. Not sure what the complaint is.

The complaint is that in RL a trait is an inherent talent and a skill is acquired over time. It makes sense that my fighter could learn tool use. It does not make sense that my fighter could acquire an inherent talent for tool use in the middle of adulthood.

Originally Posted By: Matchstk

And if you had bothered to play the game straight, you would have discovered that as you level up, class-specific skills do emerge in the Traits. Mages and Priests can focus on increasing spell energy or summoning strength, increased magical damage or armor bearing abilities. Fighters can focus on riposte, backstab, increased Endurance. Archers can become wicked snipers. It's all up to you.

When you use the editor as I did, you can see all the traits, so I am already aware of the class-specific skills.

[Randomizer]

Graymold patch doesn't need cave lore. There are also two places where you can loot it with some fighting.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Othar Trygvassen: Gentleman

Is the problem with the name "traits"? I agree that the nomenclature is silly and a holdover from older games. That said, they serve a sensible function in the game, and they're much, much, much less broken and unbalanced than the old trait system. Would it help if they were called "perks" or "specializations"? They're basically a (somewhat less wide-ranging and game-breaking) version of the perks from the Fallout series.

The old unbalanced trait system didn't bother me. I knew that certain traits and trait combinations were usually optimal, but if I had in mind a character with Pure Spirit and Fast On Feet, I could do that and the game was still playable. That system made sense in terms of creating characters, which is what I play an RPG for. There's a guy, he is really good with machines, so he has Nimble Fingers. There'a a lizard guy, he appears to be a brute (Good Constitution) but he's actually a magic prodigy (Natural Mage). All of these qualities were available from the start, which is logical from the perspective of character creation. The character has certain talents or background, which affects their acquisition of certain skills.

My main problem with the old traits system were 1) I could only choose two per character and 2) there weren't enough of them. A4-6 could really have used a "Shrewd" trait that worked like Negotiator does in the new game.

I think the basic issue is that I am far less interested in game balance than I am in being able to create characters that match my conception in as detailed a manner as possible. I would like to be able to choose many more details at the start, and then be able to get any character through the game even if the build is not optimal. That was what I loved so much about A4-6 -- the game was finishable with any set of characters as long as I didn't get all macho about the difficulty level. I never enjoyed Geneforge nearly as much, because optimization was required if I wanted to actually finish the game without cheating. In my opinion, in the new game too much of the role-playing aspect has been sacrificed to gain balance.